Police were summoned to a high school after a boy wrote a story about using a gun to kill a dinosaur. The boy was searched, suspended from school, and subsequently handcuffed and arrested when he did not handle the interrogation calmly.

The boy is 16, so not quite as young as that sentence makes it sound. He also suffers from a unspecified learning disorder and the "story" was written in a resource class that was supposed to aid him with that problem. Here's a few more details about the creative writing project gone stupidly wrong.

Alex Stone, 16, said he was assigned to come up with a fictional story for a creative writing assignment at Summerville High School on August 19, 2014. The brief assignment involved writing a few lines that were supposed to mimic a social media post; a “status update” drafted on paper.

Stone’s submission discussed himself and a fictitious dinosaur that lived next door to him. He wrote that he used a gun to kill the dinosaur.

“I killed my neighbor’s pet dinosaur, and, then, in the next status I said I bought the gun to take care of the business,” Stone said to NBC 12.

According to an incident report, a resource teacher identified as Jessica Lewis emailed Assistant Principal Preston Giet on Monday evening to tell him she discovered a reference to a gun while going over students' assignments.

"The email stated that the suspect had written in a classroom assignment that he had 'bought a gun to take care of business,'" the report said.

A "school resource officer" was summoned (which basically means a moonlighting/specially-assigned police officer was summoned). School officials then passed on the information to the rest of the police department, which arrived to question Stone, search his locker, his book bag and his person. His mother wasn't informed of this until after it happened. In addition, Stone, despite proving to be no threat, was arrested and suspended for the rest of the week.

"The information that is being reported is grossly incorrect in reference to what led to the juvenile being charged," said Capt. Jon Rogers in a Summerville police statement released on Thursday."The charges do not stem from anything involving a dinosaur or writing assignment, but the student's conduct."

OK, then. Here's the extent of Stone's "conduct," according to the police themselves.

According to police, when Stone was asked by school officials about the comment written on the assignment, he became "very irate" and said it was a joke.

A Summerville Police Department report states that Stone continued to be disruptive and was placed in handcuffs, and was told that he was being detained for disturbing schools.

It would appear that Stone was only "disturbing" school officials who seemed intent on finding some evidence of his desire to shoot people and was understandably frustrated that they wouldn't believe it wasn't some sort of threat. Whatever disturbance Stone caused was limited to a single office. There was no reason for anyone to claim, much less believe, that his written assignment, or his behavior inside that office, was "disturbing" his classmates, other classes or anyone else not directly involved.

This is the totality of the school's response to the situation.

Pat Raynor, spokeswoman for Dorchester District 2, said on Thursday she could not comment on the circumstances surrounding the incident on the advice of the school district's attorney.

Good advice, considering the situation has now expanded to include the media and Stone's lawyer, who plans to challenge both the suspension and the legality of the school and police department's actions.

"There is a point for discretion in the consequences for what you find in your investigation," Trump said. "That's when you have to factor in age and developmental issues and the context in which the comment or threat was made."

Discretion is the better part of valor emergency preparedness, but Trump doesn't actually mean what he says here. What he actually means is discretion is the better part of having your school shot up because you failed to overreact properly.

"Comments that were made by children a couple decades ago pre-Columbine, pre 9/11, pre-Sandy Hook would never rise to a suspension expulsion or prosecution," he said. "Parents see this as criminalizing the behavior but the other side of it is security and school officials can't afford to make one mistake and have a credible plot slip through the cracks that leave people killed."

Better safe than sorry, no matter how many non-threatening students you have to suspend and/or arrest. And if these students aren't thrilled with being searched and interrogated over written words deliberately robbed of context, you can just toss them to local law enforcement and let them flip through the law books until they find a charge that can be beaten to fit and painted to match.

Once again, I'm not saying even questionable incidents like these shouldn't be investigated. But the end result of the investigation shouldn't be a suspension or an arrest when nothing incriminating turns up. And there's certainly no excuse for not contacting parents when something like this happens. Deliberately excluding them is not only dishonest, but it's cowardly. It gives the appearance that the school would rather steamroll students than allow another possibly adversarial viewpoint into the "discussion."

from the institutionalized-streisanding dept

It's 2014 and do we really need to be reminded that, when you seek to censor something by demanding that it be removed from view, it's really only going to generate that much more attention to the original? I believe there's even a term for that sort of thing. As you may have heard, thanks to a ridiculous ruling in the EU Court of Justice, Google is being forced to start removing links to content, based on submissions by people who wish their past embarrassments would just disappear down the memory hole. The company received tens of thousands of requests for removals based on the new ruling, and last week began removing such links from its index, following a review by the new team the company had to put together to review these requests.

It appears that, as part of its transparency efforts, Google is also telling the websites who are being delinked that they are being delinked over this, because both the BBC and the Guardian have stories up today about how they've had stories removed from Google thanks to the "right to be forgotten" efforts. And, guess what? Both articles dig into what original articles have been removed, making it fairly easy to determine just who was so embarrassed and is now seeking to have that embarrassing past deleted. And, of course, by asking for the content to be removed, these brilliant individuals with embarrassing histories have made both the removal attempt and the original story newsworthy all over again.

First up, is the BBC, which received a notice about one of its articles being removed from search. That article is all about Merrill Lynch chairman Stan O'Neal losing his job. In fact, the only person named in the article is... Stan O'Neal. Take a wild guess what thin-skinned former top executive to a major US financial firm must have issued a "please forget me" request to Google? The BBC's Robert Preston -- author of both articles -- questions why this should be forgotten:

My column describes how O'Neal was forced out of Merrill after the investment bank suffered colossal losses on reckless investments it had made.

Is the data in it "inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant"?

Hmmm.

Most people would argue that it is highly relevant for the track record, good or bad, of a business leader to remain on the public record - especially someone widely seen as having played an important role in the worst financial crisis in living memory (Merrill went to the brink of collapse the following year, and was rescued by Bank of America).

In other words, welcome to the new world in Europe, where all sorts of important, truthful and relevant information gets deleted.

Three of the articles, dating from 2010, relate to a now-retired Scottish Premier League referee, Dougie McDonald, who was found to have lied about his reasons for granting a penalty in a Celtic v Dundee United match, the backlash to which prompted his resignation.

The Guardian does searches for McDonald on both the US and UK versions of Google and finds that McDonald's lie is wiped from history over in the UK, while we Americans can still find it, no problem.

It's pretty likely that Paul Baxendale-Walker is the person complaining about that second article, since he's the main subject of that article. The other two... are not clear at all. The Post-It wars story names three individuals: Julien Berissi, Stephane Heude and Emilie Cozette. But none of them are portrayed in any way that would seem negative. It just shows them having some fun by making giant post-it artwork. And the other one is just weird because it's not an actual story, but an index page showing a week of story headlines and opening blurbs -- but apparently whichever article in the list caused the request wasn't directly included itself -- suggesting whoever sent in the request did a pretty bad job of figuring out what to censor.

Either way, both the Guardian and the BBC point out how ridiculous this is. Preston, at the BBC, says this is "confirming the fears of many in the industry" that this will be used "to curb freedom of expression and to suppress legitimate journalism that is in the public interest." Meanwhile, James Ball at the Guardian, notes how troubling this is, and starts to think of ways to deal with it, including highlighting every "deleted" article:

But this isn't enough. The Guardian, like the rest of the media, regularly writes about things people have done which might not be illegal but raise serious political, moral or ethical questions – tax avoidance, for example. These should not be allowed to disappear: to do so is a huge, if indirect, challenge to press freedom. The ruling has created a stopwatch on free expression – our journalism can be found only until someone asks for it to be hidden.

Publishers can and should do more to fight back. One route may be legal action. Others may be looking for search tools and engines outside the EU. Quicker than that is a direct innovation: how about any time a news outlet gets a notification, it tweets a link to the article that's just been disappeared. Would you follow @GdnVanished?

Preston has asked Google how the BBC can appeal, while Ball says the Guardian doesn't believe there's any official appeals process. Either way, it's safe to say that (1) this process is a mess and leading to the censorship of legitimate content and (2) people like Stan O'Neal and Dougie McDonald who thought that they could hide their embarrassing pasts under this ruling may not end up being very happy in the long term.

from the obscenity-vs.-free-speech dept

Obscenity law and the First Amendment tend to run into each other from time to time and the whole "I know it when I see it" concept makes things a bit arbitrary in the best of situations. Still, it's pretty standard for people to assume questions of obscenity revolve around imagery -- still or video -- rather than written works. Text and stories often explore taboo subjects, but still are seen to have legitimate literary value. Stories like Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita involve somewhat horrifying concepts, but generally are still considered legitimate works of literature. In an age of easy creation for user-generated content, fan fiction and the like, it is not uncommon for things like slash fiction or related fan fiction to involve incredibly graphic scenes. Whether or not you see the appeal (and, personally, I don't get it at all), it's difficult to step aside and say that a particular form of storytelling should be judged as obscene and illegal. When it's purely fiction, and no one is being harmed or forced to participate and/or experience the work against their will, it is difficult to see what sort of harm has been caused. That is, perhaps, why it is "very rare" for there to be obscenity prosecutions for purely text-based works of fiction. Rare, but not unknown.

Just recently a federal district court in Georgia ruled that a series of stories written or edited by Frank McCoy were obscene, and thus he violated 18 USC 1462 in "transporting" obscene works. McCoy challenged whether or not the stories themselves could be considered obscene. As you might imagine, the subject matter is not mainstream. It is definitely on the extreme. Just reading the descriptions from the court case, which I will not repeat here, made me cringe and feel extremely uncomfortable. We're talking about extremely taboo subjects that are somewhat horrifying even just to read.

But, again, one could argue the same sorts of things about Lolita, or any number of other works. Should they, too, be deemed obscene? It seems like a dangerous slippery slope, especially when we're talking about purely written material. In this case, McCoy even had a distinguished English professor testify on his behalf that the works had "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."

In his defense, Defendant relies upon the testimony of an expert witness, Professor Gary Richardson, in order to show the Court that his work has serious literary, political, and artistic value.*fn8 (Docs. 165-4 at 67-90, 165-5.) Professor Richardson is a Professor and Chairman of the Department of English at Mercer University. Professor Richardson previously received a Fulbright Scholarship and is a decorated academic in the field of English and literature. Professor Richardson concluded, in his expert opinion, that Defendant's body of work had literary, political, and artistic value. (Doc. 165-5 at 34-36.) Professor Richardson describes Defendant's stories as love stories, "basic romance plots," and "science fiction." (Doc. 165-4 at 80-81.) While Professor Richardson acknowledges that the predominant themes in Defendant's work involve "social mores" and "may be considered taboo," he testified that these are incidental to Defendant's greater efforts to "undertake an artistic rendering." (Id. at 84.) These themes, including graphic and explicit incestuous sexual abuse, rape, torture, and murder of prepubescent children and young girls, are according to Professor Richardson, a form of "reader entrapment" which reflects his intent to generate political interest. (Id. at 85.)

During his testimony, Professor Richardson also described Defendant's use of complex literary techniques within his body of work that develop the characters and further the plot line;*fn9 including, interpolated tale (the use of competing narratives) and complex resonances. (Id. at 87.) Professor Richardson, as an expert in literature, urges the Court to consider a deeper level and "close reading" of Defendant's work and examine the pornographic "visual gaze" and "central consciousness" are complex "variations on narrative point of view." (Id. at 88.) According to Professor Richardson, Defendant's work "reflects serious thought and serious artistry." (Doc. 165-5 at 4.) Among his reasons in support of his conclusion that Defendant's body of work contains literary value are, for example, Defendant's use of inversion of a biological reality in the story entitled "Rapesuzy." There, Professor Richardson points toward Defendant's use of science fiction-including the use of nanobots-as he explores the complex and timeless themes of the nature of love, the difference and relationship between love and sexuality, and how society is disposed to interact sexually with the rest of the world. (Id. at 6-7.) For these reasons, Professor Richardson concluded that "under a narrow definition" Defendant's work does have serious literary value and further that "from the standards of people who study literature, [Defendant's] stories would manifest serious literary value."*fn10 (Id. at 19, 22.)

But the judge disagreed, saying that "the Court can find no independent value within the work when considered as a whole" and thus judged the work obscene, finding McCoy guilty. In a separate ruling on the same day, the judge also rejected McCoy's attempt to have the case thrown out by arguing that the burden was on the government to prove that the works had no "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." In other words, there was a question of whether or not the First Amendment requires the assumption that the work has other value, and then it's the government's job to prove otherwise. But the court rejects that and says that the burden is on McCoy to prove that the work has such value -- though, as noted in the other decision, it then rejected the opinion of an expert who testified to that effect. Here, the judge said that the work deserves no assumption of protection:

Stated in other words, Defendant's short stories are not entitled to a heightened evidentiary standard, as a matter of federal constitutional law, because he believes them to be intrinsically literary, capable of joining the ranks of great classical erotic literature such as Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer,and Lolita.*fn5 See Bench Opinion at 9-12 (Discussion of why the Court concludes that Defendant's short stories, when taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value). Accordingly, though the Eleventh Circuit was not convinced that the musical composition Nasty could speak for itself, this Court has far less trouble declaring that Defendant's sexually explicit narratives, with their only tangentially related plots, can speak for themselves.

The subject matter of McCoy's stories is certainly extremely far from the mainstream, and (as noted) could make many people (including myself) somewhat squeamish. But, it still seems troubling that a court is determining that a written work is flat out illegal, when its creation harmed no one, and the work itself has not been forced upon anyone who did not want it. In fact, within the court's ruling, it notes that McCoy put warnings on the work such that those who might be similarly troubled by the contents would know not to read it:

This story contains very graphic violence against a very young child. If such things bother you (and they do me) I advise against reading this. The story is based upon a line that ran through my head one night, and I couldn't get it out [...basic description of the very taboo subjects included in the story... ] FINAL WARNING !!!! If you think the previous description is based; the actual story is much worse! I strongly advise you to skip this one.

The court, however, uses this "warning" as extra evidence that McCoy knew the work was obscene, and thus uses it against him. That seems kind of silly. After all, wouldn't the concern over obscenity be the impact the work might have on an unsuspecting or unexpecting reader? Yet here, such a reader would be clearly warned off.

I find this troubling on a variety of First Amendment grounds, especially as the standards used in the case could apply to all sorts of works both professionally published (books exploring the taboo are not exactly uncommon) and to a ton of things written by unsuspecting individuals on the internet. While you and I might not find such works to have value, it still seems quite worrying when a court can decide what kind of stories are legal or illegal.

from the just-saying dept

Over the years, we've noted time and time again that people seem to think that if a book, movie or TV show comes out that has some basic similarities to a project they worked on, it simply must be copyright infringement. But, of course, copyright is supposed to apply to specific expression, rather than mere ideas. As we've noted, over the years, the line on this is unfortunately blurry, but for some cases, it's pretty clear that there's no infringement at all. Such is the case in a legal fight over a Disney movie (direct to video, of course) about a dog who helps Santa Claus. Three guys came up with a similar idea, which they wrote as a short story (it took three guys to come up with such an idea?) and then decided that the movie must have infringed on their copyright. It did not. I'll let THREsq's summary explain:

The court acknowledged that the short story and the Disney movies had some elements in common: they all feature a threat to Christmas and a talking dog; all feature a dog named Paws, Santa Paws or Puppy Paws; they all have magical icicles; etc. There also is some similar dialogue. However, "apart from these abstract similarities, the remaining elements of the plaintiffs' short story and defendants' movies are substantially dissimilar," the court notes. "Furthermore, most of the aforementioned similarities between plaintiffs' short story and defendants' works are not protected by copyright law."

While we can point to cases like this and say that the system is working, just the fact that such cases so often get filed shows a real problem. We've so built up this perception of copyright-over-all and "ownership society" that people really do think that anyone having the same idea as them must have infringed -- and are so sure of it that they're willing to go to court. That's a symptom of a much bigger problem with the system and the way people view it today.

from the rampant-speculation dept

Generally speaking, the press has something of an implicit agreement that they don't use underage Presidential offspring in politically tinged stories. For obvious reasons, it's considered to be a pretty cynical move. Of course, if they actually do something newsworthy, it might be a different story. This afternoon a bunch of stories started appearing, talking about how President Obama's daughter Malia was traveling in Oaxaca, Mexico as part of a trip with some classmates (and 25 secret service agents). This story was reported on by the AFP wire service, and some tied it to the fact that the State Department recently issued a travel advisory urging Americans to stay away from parts of Mexico. Not surprisingly, some picked up on this story to suggest some sort of... something. Double standard? Hypocrisy? Of course, the details suggest this really was not much of a story. If you actually read the State Department warning, it makes it clear that there is no warning in place for Oaxaca -- so this trip doesn't appear to go against that warning.

It seems likely, then, that the AFP decided to pull back the story once someone pointed that out, but the story is now rapidly disappearing from a variety of online publications (big and small), leading to questions and easy political points about how the story is being "scrubbed." Google News listed about 27 versions of the story when I looked, and later, following the links, I found almost every single one of them was flat out gone. In most cases, they were replaced with a 404 (including The Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Australian) or sometimes just redirecting people to a front page (Huffington Post and International Business Times). The only version I still found up was at TurkishPress.com, but it might not last very long.

Now, I tend to think that using the President's underage kids for a political story is generally a low blow and not particularly nice, but if there is something newsworthy happening, it should be fair game. I also think that, from the sound of it, this story got blown out of proportion by those who didn't bother to actually read the details of the destination or the State Department's specific warning which notes no problem at that destination.

But, having said all that, simply having the article disappear completely, rather than putting up a correction or an explanation of what happened, simply fuels both the conspiracy theories and the interest in the story. It's exactly the wrong way to go about dealing with the situation. There are a variety of possibilities here. The administration may have asked the press to pull the story, which would only generate more interest in the news. The AFP, upon realizing that it shouldn't have posted the story, may have issued a kill order/retraction of sorts. Or perhaps there's some other reasoning. But there are good ways to handle these situations and ways that are guaranteed to backfire. Simply making the articles disappear is pretty much guaranteed to backfire and generate more interest in the story, even if it's a total non-story. Replacing the original story with a "hey, we thought this, but we got it wrong," would have been much more effective.

from the no,-really,-it's-not dept

Yesterday morning, I was on a panel discussion at an event, where at one point I was asked about how I choose what to write about. I explained a little bit about the kinds of topics we cover, and then finally said, as I've said for years: "In the end, it comes down to whether or not I find something interesting and if I have something to say about it." I then said: "If there's a story everyone is covering, but I don't have anything to say about it, I don't feel the need to cover it." Hopefully this isn't surprising. We're not a "news" site, but an opinion site. But there's really more to it than that. There's something a little strange in seeing a ton of publications all rushing to cover the same news. There is this focus, these days, on the so-called "SEOing" of the news, where various sites act as "content farms," focusing on writing about whatever's "hot" to try to get the pageviews. As an example of this, earlier this week, right after the East Coast earthquake, I saw someone Twitter joke about an infamous tech news site (who shall remain nameless), saying that its staff were probably rushing out dozens of stories about how the earthquake news spread on Twitter. Anything to get the "pageviews" on searches about the earthquake.

But, as I've said over the years, this strategy makes no sense to me. Why would you ever focus on a strategy of trying to downgrade your content to commodity level, rather than working on content that is unique and actually stands out? Writing the same story that everyone else writes about, without adding anything of value to it just seems like a fool's game. I can recognize that "news" sites feel the need to cover such stories on a completist level, but does the online news reader really need so many stories about a single event? Isn't part of the point of the internet that we can link without having to recreate the wheel thousands of times every time some big news breaks?

Which brings us to the title of this post. When the news broke that a certain famous and visionary tech CEO was retiring, I honestly couldn't think of anything to say about it that wasn't being said everywhere else. But, of course, everyone else felt the need to write something. Just a quick look at Google News on the topic shows nearly 5,000 stories on just that:

And that doesn't count the sections below that main one, where tons of folks tried to come up with other takes on the story. There are, as I write this, 157 stories on how various stock markets reacted to the news. There are another 50 or so stories on his health history. Obviously, this is big news and it's important, but should everyone cover it?

I asked, via various social networking platforms, if anyone minded if we just didn't cover the story at all. And I was a bit surprised at how the near unanimous reaction was to thank us for deciding not to cover the news. There were a few people who disagreed. Only one person seemed really surprised that we wouldn't, saying, "he is significant, why wouldn't you" cover the story. One person offered to give us money if we could go three weeks without covering the story (I'm guessing this post may disqualify us). A few people did say they would like our take on "the impact" of the story. In this case, the answer is I have no idea.

So this post isn't about his resignation. It's about this question of how people cover the news online today, and the desire for everyone to "have the story" just because everyone else does. I'm wondering if that really makes sense. I am, of course, quite comfortable with not covering the story at all. There are lots of stories we don't cover. But I'm wondering about the value of so many publications all writing the same basic story. Yes, some (perhaps many) do add value or different perspectives. But the basic facts are pretty much the same.

So, if we don't cover a story, it's not because we didn't see it or don't know about it. Sometimes, it's just because we think it's pretty well covered by everyone else already -- perhaps too well covered -- and our time may be better spent doing something else where we can actually add some value.

from the cool dept

Last year, we wrote about a fascinating "art" project, called "Significant Objects," that involved a bunch of writers buying up random cheap/worthless trinkets, but then listing them on eBay along with a creative (fictional) story about the object. The "story" was given away for free, but the object cost money. What those involved in the project quickly found was that these worthless trinkets were suddenly selling for a lot more than their nominal "price." It was a perfect example of how an infinite good (the story), when properly attached to a scarce good (the trinket), can make that scarce good much more valuable. This is a point that many have trouble grasping. They think, when we discuss the economics of infinite and scarce goods, that the price on scarce goods always remains the same, and never seem to take into account how a connected infinite good can greatly raise the value and the price of a scarce good. A hit song (infinite) heard by millions increases the price of a concert tickets (scarce). A brilliant blog post (infinite) can increase the price of a consultant (scarce) who wrote it. A sterling reputation (infinite) for an automobile company can increase the price of the cars (scarce) they sell. It goes on and on and on.

The Significant Objects experiment was just a neat "pure" example of this in action, clearly showing how objects that otherwise would have been valued quite low by most potential buyers, could gain in value when an infinite element (a good story) was attached.

It's cool to see that those behind the Significant Objects projects are still trying to do more with the concept. The auctions apparently are still going on, but now they're trying something different as well. They're taking those stories and compiling them into a book (scarce). In fact, the story behind the book (infinite) makes the physical book more valuable as well. To make it even more "valuable," they've brought on some top artists to illustrate the stories -- so even if you read them for free online, there's now more value in buying the physical book to have the physical artwork as well.

from the and-on-and-on-and-on dept

People really have an incredible ability to assume that only they could possibly have a very common idea. Lots of people have pointed out that James Cameron's Avatar seems similar to all sorts of stories. In fact, the site io9 put together a giant list of books and movies that some claimed were copied by Cameron. And, of course, we've already mentioned two separate lawsuits. Well, now we can add a third one to the list, and it has just as much a chance to succeed as the others. In this case, it's made even more ridiculous by the fact that the book in question was written after Cameron was already working on Avatar.

In most of the cases with these types of lawsuits, it seems like those suing are really just filing what they likely know is a bogus lawsuit to get publicity for their book/movie/etc. (which is why we're not naming the book in this case). But, it does highlight an important point that we've discussed plenty of times in the past: lots of people have ideas that are similar. Ideas, by themselves, are neither unique nor protectable. It's the execution or (within the copyright realm) the expression that is unique. Yet, too many people overvalue the idea and assume that only they could possibly have had it. The idea behind the story of Avatar is pretty simplistic and common, really. It's been done plenty of times before. The reason the movie is getting so much attention is because of the execution.

from the what's-stealing,-Rupert? dept

Rupert Murdoch and his minions at News Corp. have been going around banging the drum that Google and others are "stealing" from News Corp. newspapers by linking to their stories and sending them traffic. But at the same time, they seem to have no problem totally taking credit for stories that they source from elsewhere. Late last year, the Times (of London), which is a News Corp. paper was caught publishing someone's blog post without their permission at all. And then there's the News Corp.-owned NY Post, which last year had a reporter admit that it was the paper's "policy" not to credit bloggers as the sources for stories. After that story came out, the NY Post insisted that wasn't true, but it appears the paper has been caught doing it again.

Andrew Fine alerted us to the news that suggests the NY Post used one of his posts as inspiration for a story. Fine had written about the rather disconcerting sign in a Chuck E. Cheese in Harlem. That blog post got some attention on various other blogs... and then just a couple of days later, the NY Post had an article about the very same sign (apparently, it took two reporters to write that article), with nary a mention of Fine's original blog post (or even any of the other blog posts that promoted Fine's original story).

Now, to be clear, while I do think it's good manners to cite where you sourced a story, it's certainly not required (legally or otherwise) by any means. But where it gets hypocritical is for this to come from an organization that claims that other sites merely linking to its articles are somehow "stealing." But when the NY Post comes in and blatantly borrows an idea from someone else, and does so without credit, that's perfectly fine? It seems like Murdoch and News Corp. have quite the double standard going.

from the some-data dept

In the last post, I showed the video of my presentation at the NARM event full of music industry and music industry retailers. I recognize that not everyone wants to sit through a 30 minute presentation (even though I promise that it goes quickly!), so I did want to highlight two parts of it separately, here in text, that I think are worth calling out. Both show companies that seem to (implicitly or explicitly) recognize what we talk about in terms of enabling artists to better connect with their fans and give those fans a reason to buy -- Topspin and Nettwerk. We've certainly talked about both in various posts, but execs from both companies were kind enough to share some data on some of their experiments that have not been reported elsewhere, and which I thought was worth sharing.

Topspin, of course, has built up a platform to better enable artists to both connect with fans and to give them a reason to buy, and has been able to work with some fantastic artists, both big and small, including Eminem, Paul McCartney, the Beastie Boys, Metric, Beck, Van Hunt, David Byrne and a bunch of others as well. The exciting thing is the level of success Topspin has found with these artists:

The average transaction price across all Topspin artists has been $22. Compare that to the average price of a CD, which remains between $12 and $14. If you give people a reason to buy, they're willing to pay more. It's obviously not just about "getting stuff for free" as some contend.

Even better, two separate artists using TopSpin have found that their average transaction price is between $50 and $100.

Finally, one artist using Topspin has found (amazingly) that the average transaction price from what was being offered was greater than $100.

And, on top of that, on one recent project, they found that 84% of the orders were premium offers (meaning above the lowest tier).

The idea that people just want stuff for free? Debunked. Give people a reason to buy in the form of real value they can't get elsewhere, and they absolutely will. About an hour after my talk, Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin did a keynote interview at the same event. You can watch it here:

Separately, we've definitely been quite impressed with what Terry McBride has done lately with some artists who work with Nettwerk, the indie label/artist management company. Terry's very much been a believer in the mantra of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, and has even talked about how the whole concept of copyright has become outdated. His view isn't that this is necessarily a good or bad thing, but it's just the way it is, and in helping the artists he works with, they have to figure out ways to work with it. To date, that's included a lot of creative ideas for better connecting with fans and then giving them a reason to buy. One experiment he did was with the artist K-OS, who did a few different experiments, starting with allowing the fans to create their own "mix" of his latest album. Not a remix, but a mix. They released the stems of the songs before the album was released, let the fans create their own mixes, had them vote on the best, and then released two albums at the same time. One was the "pro" mix and the other was the "fan" mix. Then you could buy either one separately, or both together as a package.

The second experiment was the "pay on your way out" concert tour. Realistically speaking, this was a series of ten "free" shows. You could get in for free, but they asked you to pay what you felt was reasonable on the way out. Given the insistence by people that fans just want something for free, you would expect that very few would actually pay anything at all. Of course, that wasn't what happened.

Terry was kind enough to share with us some data from the experiment. Despite being free to come and go without paying anything, 63% of people attending ended up donating money on the way out. Now I'm sure some folks will mock this and say that he could have made more by charging everyone, but it seems quite likely that a lot more people came out to these free shows than if he had made people pay in advance. Almost two thirds of people ended up paying, totally voluntarily -- and their average donation was $6. Again, some will claim that this is low, but you have to look at the bigger overall picture. During this tour each of the two K-OS CDs were separately in the top 50 list of best sellers.

So, he gave a series of free shows that ended up bringing in tens of thousands of dollars combined (average attendance at each show was approximately 1,000 people) and it helped get a lot of people to buy both the CDs that were being offered in support of K-OS. Some people are going to nitpick the numbers, of course, but the evidence remains clear again: it's not that fans just want stuff for free. If you give them a reason to buy, an awful lot of them will absolutely buy.